Harper government’s shabby treatment of vulnerable refugees is a scandal and the Federal Court of Canada has just confirmed as much.

Health-care providers and supporters protested federal cuts to refugee care in Ottawa on June 16, 2014. Now the Federal Court has ruled the Harper government's policy violates sections of the Charter that prohibit "cruel and unusual" treatment and that affirm equal rights for all.

Published on Fri Jul 04 2014

Hanif Ayubi is stuck in limbo. Like many others, he fled Afghanistan for fear of the Taliban and came to Canada in 2001, but wasn’t accepted as a refugee. Still, he wasn’t deported because it is too risky to ship people back to the war-ravaged country.

Though seriously ill with diabetes and other ailments, he has worked as a restaurant dishwasher in Ottawa and at gas stations. He makes about $10,000 a year, files tax returns and pays taxes. At one time he could get help from the Citizenship and Immigration Ministry to offset the costs of his insulin, medical tests and medications under a federal program that paid for basic health care for refugee claimants until they left the country or became eligible for provincial health care. No longer.

In 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government abruptly cut benefits to Ayubi, along with thousands of other failed claimants and refugees from countries Ottawa deems safe, in a shameful policy shift that refugee advocates warned would put lives at risk.

Ayubi is a case in point. He can’t afford the insulin that keeps him alive. He can’t afford health insurance. He relies on a pharmaceutical company that provides free insulin to his clinic. But he has no way of knowing whether that will continue. He can’t afford drugs for hypertension, kidney problems and other issues. He can’t even get enough diabetes test strips to routinely check his blood sugar levels. He lives on a razor’s edge.

While the Canadian Medical Association cheered the ruling as “a victory for reasonable compassion and a big step for natural justice,” Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander intends to appeal. A less obtuse government would have been shamed into retreat, given the string of humiliating court defeats the Conservatives have suffered over Harper’s clumsy attempt to shoehorn an unqualified judge onto the Supreme Court, his hugely flawed law-and-order agenda and his unlawful bid to change the Senate. But this government is shameless. Alexander has even attacked Ontario for trying to plug the gap, accusing officials of coddling “bogus claimants” and “fraudsters.”

The Tories persist in trying to justify the cuts by asserting that people such as Ayubi “should not be entitled to better health care than Canadians receive.” But that’s a refugee-bashing argument that fell flat in court.

Far from living up to its responsibilities, the government “has intentionally set out to make the lives of these disadvantaged individuals even more difficult than they already are,” Mactavish found. “It has done this in an effort to force those who have sought the protection of this country to leave Canada more quickly, and to deter others from coming here to seek protection.”

And children are at greatest risk, Mactavish found. The cutbacks “potentially jeopardize the health, and indeed the very lives, of these innocent and vulnerable children in a manner that shocks the conscience and outrages our standards of decency,” she ruled.

Dr. Philip Berger, medical director at St. Michael’s Hospital’s inner city health program, confirms as much. “Doctors across Canada have seen these cuts place the pregnancies of refugee women at serious risk, cause denial of treatment for sick children and deprive refugees with cancer of coverage for chemotherapy,” he said, hailing the court’s decision to “put an end to this unwarranted suffering.”

This is a welcome ruling in favour of the Charter, human dignity and compassion. Canadians are better than this federal government. And the courts are saying so.

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